1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a wear plug for inserting into the carrier of a slide element with one end facing towards a slide partner and a peripheral surface. The invention also relates to a slide element with a carrier comprising a wear surface and at least one mounting borehole in which a plug of this nature is inserted.
2. Related Art
Slide bearing systems made up of slide elements are generally used to reduce the friction generated by the relative movements of two machine components. If these slide bearing systems do not have oil or grease lubrication, bearing materials with included solid lubricants are generally used. This means, for example, that wear plugs which contain this solid lubricant can be inserted into a carrier. Particularly for high temperature applications it is beneficial if the plugs themselves are made of a mixture of metal and solid lubricant.
The disadvantages of these systems are the different thermal coefficients of expansion of support bodies and wear plugs as well as the different oxidation properties of the material used for the carrier and the plug material.
The stresses which occur during operation as a result of the different changes in diameter caused by the differences in the thermal expansion and oxidation properties result in enormous pressure stresses with the consequence that the plug material suffers cracking. As a result of this cracking it is possible that the wear plugs may fall out of the actual mounting borehole in the carrier due to the plugs becoming fractured.
Therefore the slide stoppers made by produced in the slide shoes of aluminium pusher furnaces with stepped diameters. The corresponding mounting borehole in the carrier is also stepped. The dimensions of the wear plugs are considerably less than those of the mounting borehole but are prevented from falling out of the boreholes by the thicker collar diameter.
Mechanical machining is required to produce these stepped diameters on the wear plugs. The production of a stepped geometry made in a press is not a reliable process using these materials since the high level of solid lubricant means that there is an extreme risk of cracking on the blank at the point of transition from the larger to the smaller diameter.